Tip of the boonie hat to the readers who forwarded this link from Weasel Zippers which leads to this article in the Washington Examiner.

Justice Department attorneys are advancing an argument at the Supreme Court that could allow the government to invoke international treaties as a legal basis for policies such as gun control that conflict with the U.S. Constitution, according to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Their argument is that a law implementing an international treaty signed by the U.S. allows the federal government to prosecute a criminal case that would normally be handled by state or local authorities.

In the late 60s, a high-school classmate of mine built a rather sophisticated magazine-fed .22LR zip gun in shop class with the knowing, and approving, assistance of the shop teacher. Boy, what he could done with one of these: MIT students develop easy-to-use 3D printer for schools

No one recalls how much you helped me in the early days, nor is more grateful for it, than me. I could not have done what I did back then without it. I considered you my best friend in the liberty (movement), next to Bob Wright who I had been fighting alongside for 20 years. I wrote the other day that our estrangement saddened and pained me yet today and I meant it.

Throughout our disagreement over what Kerodin was/is and what/who he represented, I have never believed -- as some were telling me from the very beginning -- that you were a federal asset. I still do not believe it. I have been very careful not to use your full name or draw attention to your day job (although I cannot think that the FBI has not apprised them of it by now.). Even after the airport incident, I refused to believe it.

You point to my creation of the Three concept and my proffering it to the world as some sort of hypocrisy, yet my present beef with Kerodin (and let's not forget Holly, the only way he's able to do business at all given past indiscretions and court judgments) is their use of the Three "trademark" to keep others from using it in order to add to the Kerodin's profit margin. Get that? I threw the concept to the world and they are trying to keep others from using it unless they profit from it -- using, I might add, threats of the very federal laws they claim to despise. In fact, the "trademark" is not yet official and won't be for a matter of weeks, but that has not kept them from threatening firearm manufacturers with federal legal consequences if they do not "cease and desist." This they have been doing already for many months. Oh, the irony of a jail-house lawyer using the federal leviathan to coerce liberty-minded folks, all in the name of "the Patriot community."

In a sense, I have only myself to blame. I could have trademarked everything early on, but then I deliberately didn't want to profit from it, merely to propagate the idea. As you well know from early discussions, based upon my experiences of the 90s, I did not want the Three Percent to be an organization, subject to infiltration, provocation and discredit. The idea was that it was, I thought, impossible to infiltrate an idea. That was before I met up with the likes of our many-aliased Mr. K. Live and learn.

My criticism of you in the post, gentle though it was, has nothing to do with Kerodin except that your embrace of his "kill 'em all let God sort 'em out" philosophy (not that K. seems to much believe in God from what I read) and your winking at his threats to innocents is emblematic of the increasing tone of the Dark Side in your posts and comments. If we become that which we claim to fight, how different is that from the collectivist butchers except the names and faces? Fantasies of a Turner Diaries-like "The Day of the Rope" and Kerodin's obvious wish to have everyone who's ever criticized him at the end of said rope apparently didn't concern you. If you lose your essential humanity in the fight to save it what is gained? What is lost, including your immortal soul?

There is this desperate need on the part of some folks (and I learned this very vividly in the 90s) to embrace any allies -- including collectivists such as neo-Nazis -- out of sense of powerlessness, a yearning for numbers. Yet if your "ally" ends up by stabbing you in the back what is gained besides the warm and fuzzy comfort you feel just before the knife slips between your ribs and penetrates your heart? What you ascribed to egotism on my part is just the hard-wiring I learned in the 90s -- do not suffer fools, con-men or neo-collectivists even grudgingly because they will damage, co-opt and defeat you.

This was my initial reaction to Kerodin and so it remains today. I am grieved that I lost one of my best friends over it, but I am who I am, I believe what I believe and I serve Who I serve.

Just exactly who Kerodin is, what he truly believes and who he serves is still open for considerable debate and discovery. That process continues.

I received an email while I was out directing me to this link at Kerodin's site, titled "Much fuck you in your future." Unfortunately, by the time I got home the post had been taken down by Kerodin (or some adult supervision with access to his website) and said merely "Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist."

The fellow who sent me the link commented:

His latest, he has a solution to all this! He is going to hunt down all his critics and dare them to repeat what they type and then assault them and crowd-broadcast beating the shit out of them, which is more or less a potential death threat, especially in Mike's case.

This is very useful information: It shows how Kerodin's III community and dream "republic" will tolerate dissent, that is, the same way the brownshirts did, and it also shows his total incompetence as both a trainer and a tactician--there is not a credible self defense trainer in the country who teaches students to go looking for physical fights, rather, they teach the exact opposite. And who that is sane teaches to pre-announce targets? Anyone following Kerodin needs to look at the example he sets and ask themselves if they would follow such a lunatic into battle.

It's also legally very stupid, as he says he wants to try to petition to get his gun rights back. Why would anyone who is honest about that create such a public record that any judge would look at and say "No way"?

The guy is psychotic. He is destroying himself. Every time he gets prodded to go on a rant it becomes obvious to everyone with a brain and further makes those still loyal to him look like the idiots they are.

Question: How long did his parole last? Is it still active? Because I would think this would really f-ck him up if whoever monitors him knew he was making thinly-veiled criminal threats.

Later, he emailed that the post had been taken down.

Post existed, cannot retrieve, essentially he was saying he has a solution to this and that is before he goes to Idaho he will go seek you out and Militialaw and a few others and invite you to repeat to him in person what you say over the internet and then either you will beat him up or he will beat you up.

Convicted extortionist Christian Kerodin, has demanded a face-to-face meeting with me and a bunch of others who he believes “are all talk.”

These meetings, according to Kerodin, are necessary as he wants to prove a theory:

Now, my contention is that the man would only speak to me one time in the tone he brings to the blogs if we were face-to-face. He would either stop using the tone, he would beat me into unconsciousness, or I would make it impossible for him to continue.

While he is trying his best to sound tough, all he is doing is reinforcing the fact he can’t prove any of the claims I’ve raised.

But his threat does raise an interesting ancillary point.

If Kerodin does manage to go to Alabama, Texas, or Florida as he is promising, it appears he can be arrested under the federal anti-stalking law codified at 18 U.S.C section 2261A(a); interstate travel + intent to injure/intimidate + causing target reasonable fear = Kerodin’s promised trip.

But Kerodin seems to have no fear of being prosecuted under this or any other statute.

Ask yourself why that is.

Rather reckless behavior for an ex-con indeed. One would almost believe that someone has issued him a federal hunting license for yours truly and anyone else who crosses him, along with a Get Out of Jail Free Card.

LATER: A reader sends -- "Hey Mike, Just in case you didn't know this already, and are interested, Kerodin's latest meltdown can for now still be seen here (in Google Cache). Don't know how long that will last."

Huh? Well, Sunstein has a kernel of truth here, but does not admit the damning evidence.

Chambers took Hiss’s bait. In an interview on national television, Chambers repeated his charges. In response to the libel suit, he produced stolen State Department documents and notes that seemed to establish not merely that Hiss was a Communist, but that he had spied for the Soviet Union. Hiss was convicted of perjury.

The conviction was stunning, for Hiss had been a member of the nation’s liberal elite. A graduate of Harvard Law School and a law clerk for the revered Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, he held positions of authority in the Agriculture, Justice and State departments. He was tall, handsome, elegant, gracious, even dashing.

At his 1949 perjury trial, an extraordinary number of liberal icons served as character witnesses for Hiss, including two Supreme Court justices (Stanley Reed and Felix Frankfurter); John W. Davis, who was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1924; and Adlai Stevenson, who was to become the Democratic nominee for the presidency in 1952 and 1956. . .

The Hiss case split the country. Many liberals thought that Chambers was a liar and perhaps a madman. Chambers explained their reaction in a way that fit with, and helped spur, a widespread view on the right: “The simple fact is that when I took up my little sling and aimed at Communism, I also hit something else. What I hit was the forces of that great socialist revolution, which, in the name of liberalism, spasmodically, incompletely, somewhat formlessly, but always in the same direction, has been inching its ice cap over the nation for two decades.”

Finally, Sunstein gets around to admitting, grudgingly, "Most of those who have carefully studied the case, and who have explored evidence emerging long after the trial itself, have concluded that Chambers was telling the truth and that Hiss did indeed perjure himself."

Perjury was the least of it, Cass, as you well know. In the 2009 book by Haynes, Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, which is based on KGB documents, it was demonstrated that Alger Hiss was certainly a Soviet spy for the GRU.

But the legacy of the case extends well beyond the issue of Hiss’s guilt. Chambers’ broader charge -- that liberalism was a species of socialism, “inching its ice cap over the nation” -- polarized the nation. His attack on the patriotism of the Ivy League elite reflected an important strand in American culture, and it helped to initiate suspicions that persist to this day.

Liberals are no longer much interested in Hiss’s conviction, yet they are puzzled, and rightly object, when they are accused of holding positions that they abhor. We can’t easily understand those accusations, contemporary conservative thought or the influence of the Tea Party without appreciating the enduring impact of the Hiss case.

Of course the fact that Whittaker Chambers and, now, the Tea Party, were right about both Hiss and creeping socialism doesn't faze Sunnstein. He explains, faintly, the outlines of the ideological split but doesn't concede in the end that his side is wrong.

COINTELPRO (an acronym for COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveying, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations. National Security Agency operation Project MINARET targeted the personal communications of leading Americans, including Senators Frank Church and Howard Baker, civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, journalists and athletes who criticized the Vietnam War.

The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971. COINTELPRO tactics are still used to this day, and have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination. The FBI's stated motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order." -- Wikipedia.

Sadly and ironically, this neo-collectivist masturbatory fantasy is heartily seconded by Pete of WRSA who seems to have forgotten what it is we fight for. It is ironic because of who Pete is (or perhaps, was) and the job he does every day. Not much doubt that Kerodin has fantasies of hanging me with the III-trademarked rope he is selling. (Don't copy it, or he'll sue you using the federal laws he purports to despise -- unless of course you pay him.) I guess Pete will be in the cheap seats cheering him on. This is remarkably reminiscent of that other collectivist fantasy, The Turner Diaries, where Wee Willie Pierce imagined "The Day of the Rope," when -- after using them to obtain victory -- the neo-Nazis summarily hang all enemies of their new Aryan American Empire, including their former "conservative" allies who merely wanted the Constitution restored. Presumably this will include in Kerodin's iteration all of you who have the ideological error of reading and agreeing with this blog.

But of course Wee Willie Pierce is long dead, and Kerodin is well on the way to discrediting himself. (Indeed, the timeline of Kerodin's semi-breakdown at my quip and his sale of nooses could make excellent fodder for a psychoanalyst studying inadequacies and compensation.) This Robespierre-wannabe fantasy business is all canned bullshit designed for those who are unwary enough to open the can and get sprayed with the pressurized contents. The only question is, who did the canning? And why? In whose service?

Soldiers attending a pre-deployment briefing at Fort Hood say they were told that evangelical Christians and members of the Tea Party were a threat to the nation and that any soldier donating to those groups would be subjected to punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

A soldier who attended the Oct. 17th briefing told me the counter-intelligence agent in charge of the meeting spent nearly a half hour discussing how evangelical Christians and groups like the American Family Association were “tearing the country apart.”

Mayor Emanuel’s Statehouse lobbyists are engaged in serious talks with the NRA and even the more strident Illinois State Rifle Association (something that Daley would never do, and vice versa) to try and work out a compromise on legislation to force convicted gun possession violators to remain in prison for a lot longer than they already are. Emanuel himself is said to be actively involved by phone.

President Barack Obama’s behind-the-scenes plans for gun control go on but without Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden, the White House’s public face of and private force behind the push for new gun control laws, and his chief of staff, Bruce Reed, are no longer involved in the long-term planning between the White House and major gun violence prevention groups, officials from several organizations tell POLITICO.

It is interesting to see where they are now placing emphasis:

The vice president’s disappearance from an issue he’d been spearheading is a clear signal of how much the focus has shifted from passing gun control legislation in Congress to winning reforms at state capitols and building local networks that can pressure and help elect members of Congress over the long term. . .

Officials from the White House Office of Public Engagement, which reports to senior Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, are now carrying the administration’s gun control efforts. OPE officials hold a regular meeting with the major gun control groups known as the Gun Violence Table.

The weekly sessions often include OPE Director Paulette Aniskoff or official Paul Monteiro along with representatives from Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Moms Demand Action, the Center for American Progress, Organizing for Action and Americans for Responsible Solutions.

The groups are coordinating a November lobbying effort and planning events to commemorate the first anniversary of the Newtown, Conn., massacre last December.

Officials from the groups said they hope to follow the example set by gay marriage advocates — turning victories in a handful of local battles into something that resembles a national movement. . .

With Biden largely out of the nuts and bolts of gun control, the groups have proceeded to plot a strategy in concert with the White House that emphasizes success at the local level.

“What’s happening now is a necessary and appropriate drilling down into states both to push the ball forward at the state level,” said Arkadi Gerney of the Center for American Progress, who participates in the sessions. “Also, that’s the best way to move the ball forward at the federal level.”

Our enemies intend to fight this out at the state level, so must we. We need to support as best we can the efforts of folks in the front-line states where the disarmament Borg has made recent gains -- New York, Maryland, Connecticut, Colorado. In a matter of days we will renew our campaign of smuggling into those states and get the message of citizen defiance and armed civil disobedience out into both local and national media. We will begin by symbolically but publicly slapping the political faces of the governors of those states. The point will be that they can make any "law" they want, the people can still defy it.

You know, in cleaning up my office of militia-period papers to donate to the Birmingham Public Library I came across an old banner that Pete had made: It reads "Gun Control: Not One More Inch." It reminded me of how much I miss Pete's friendship but also it made me realize that this must be our rallying cry. Not one more inch. Anywhere. Pass all the laws you wish, we will still defy them, resist them, evade them and smuggle in practical token of that defiance.

Keep me and our merry band in your prayers as we go forth among the heathen Yankee gun-controllers to try to "slap their jaws and force them to resent it."

I subscribe to a search engine that keeps me up-to-date on certain terms, "ATF," "Fast and Furious," etc. It lets me know when anybody posts stories with those terms. Of course that means means I get a lot of emails telling me about stories of automatic transmission fluid, the Pakistani Anti-Terrorism Force and the Asian Tennis Federation but these are easily deleted. I also have it search for my name so I can know when somebody like the Southern Poverty Law Center slanders me once again. So, faithful little robot that it is, it delivered the link below to my email inbox this morning. I put a single little quip in my post about the slingshot attack on my house last night, and someone doesn't think it is funny. No, not one little bit:

So - I just got a heads up to go check little lil' Mikey Vanderboegh's site - and look what I found.

The cancer-ridden fuck had someone throw a ball bearing or something similar through his daughters bedroom. His response?

"Has anybody done a bedcheck on Kerodin tonight? ;-)"

The man is mentally unstable.

Now folks, I don't think I have to explain just how fucking foul and disgusting the man is to print such a thing, especially in public. If any of you still have any doubts regarding his value in life and to humanity, this should put those doubts to rest.

The man is a sad, pathetic, foul fuck who lives to create division and strife in the Patriot community.

It's that simple. Please do not bother me with his mentally unstable filth any longer. He needs help.

He needs to do his part for humanity and die already. He really thinks he earns my attention in a day. Mikey, you are simply too insignificant as a Human Being, and too irrelevant as a player in the Patriot community to warrant even one serious moment of my time. You mean nothing to real men.

Own it.

Mike, this is for you, fucktard: If I EVER decide to come at you with a projectile, I will walk up to your cancer-ridden walking corpse and push the bullet into you and through your puss-laden, seeping, oozing carcass with my fingers, you disgusting, useless fuck.

What a fucking coward.

Here's the link. It won't be long before he edits it.

My, my, my. The boy has quite a mouth for an ex-con who doesn't want his picture taken. Under a certain amount of mental pressure, perhaps? Having trouble selling seats at your feudal table in Idaho? The "trademark" extortion business not going well? Anyway, have no fear of my editing the little ;-) joke out of the original, Mr. K., or whatever your DBA alias is next week. It has always been my sincere belief from the beginning that you will eventually self-destruct and reveal yourself to the world without my help. I've been resisting the regime for 20 years and have no need of lies. My record speaks for itself. As for your threats, well, I've been threatened by experts and I'm still smiling. Indeed, I'm smiling right now.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Dear Dutchman6: I don't even know your name and I surely didn't know who you were when I wrote my book "At the Brink." I have a recollection talking to a man during the event in Connecticut what was openly talking about an armed revolution (while I remember the conversation, I don't remember the man's name (that is your name "Dutchman6")). My point was that those statements were going to be seized on by the press to make everyone at the presentation look nutty. I would argue that while it is nice to gin up the base, in order to win elections you have to take into consideration what is a concern for those in the middle of the debate. Explaining why gun ownership helps safety is important. Talking about an armed revolution these days isn't going to help you win over people in the middle of the debate. By the way, I didn't "seek" you out. You walked within two feet of me. In any case, I don't know your name and I couldn't have excluded you from the book even if I remembered your on The convenient amnesiac. Down John Lott's memory hole.

Now, our recollections of where the conversation took place are sharply different. If I did walk within two feet of him, the fact is that the conversation I recall was with a guy looking like John Lott's twin brother on the side of the building from where the rally was still going on. I had been asked by the film crew to wait there because they were going to do an interview with me. So, he did in fact "seek me out." He approached me while I was sitting on the steps. There are witnesses to the conversation. There are also witnesses from the CCDL who recall Lott's bitter denunciation of me to them over the content of my speech, much along the lines of his criticism above. If he didn't know my name, or my connection to Fast and Furious, he wasn't paying attention to the introductions or to my speech. To say that even now he doesn't know what my name is, well, pretty funny. I stand by my characterization of him as a convenient amnesiac.

At 2102hrs local time, someone fired an approximately .36 caliber ball bearing through Zoe's bedroom window, leaving about an inch diameter hole in the glass. The projectile had enough velocity to penetrate the glass but not the plastic blinds or the curtain, falling down and rolling off the sill onto the floor. Rosey was in the room at the time, using her computer. She heard two cars accelerate away. I was downstairs napping on the office couch. A few minutes later, as I was inspecting the damage from the inside, two cars reappeared and slowly passed by. Whether it was the same two I have no idea. They were gone before I could get outside.

So, I took my life in my hands and called the cops to make a police report. Mostly I wanted to see if there had been any other incidents of the like elsewhere in the neighborhood. The disinterested sheriff's deputy has come and gone, taking the projectile with him. But he did say that there had been no other reports tonight or any time in the recent past.

Hmm. Not what I expected. Occam's razor would seem to dictate that it was a bunch of kids with a slingshot. For now I've got a shaken Rosey with me downstairs below ground level. All the windows down here are barricaded with so many shelves of thick books I doubt a .30-06 would penetrate.

Has anybody done a bedcheck on Kerodin tonight? ;-)

All of this sounds like I'm not pissed about the event. It was Rosey in that room. It would be wrong to conclude that. You bet I'm pissed. We'll see what the rest of the night brings. They might get a surprise if they come wielding a deadly weapon around here again this fine evening.

Hannah's due home in a bit. I'll have her take a picture of the window and post it here when I have it.

Drove to Hattiesburg for Zoe's Senior Day soccer game and festivities. It was the last game of the year for Zoe, who has been on the team for four years now. She will graduate in the spring, and she teared up as we escorted her onto the field after the game. Memories. I'll post a photo here when I get it later today.

John Lott is a jerk. I’ve known this for some time now. I interacted with him on an article I wrote about cases involving firearms in national parks and also so-called “assault weapons” and their ban in D.C. John responded by saying that neither case was good to take to the supreme court and that, basically, me thinking so showed that I didn’t read his blog and should and I’d know more than I did. Or something like that.

After reading Leslie Kelly’s “Lies in the Sand: A Look Behind The Alamo Gun Rally,” I must ask, just which rally and march at the Alamo did Leslie Kelly attend? Her description bore little resemblance to the one I spoke at. From the column she filed for The Rivard Report you’d have thought it was a combination Klan rally and conspiracy theorist convention.

Now I’m only personally familiar with a few real conspiracies, among them the bloody Fast and Furious scandal that, with my journalist friend David Codrea, I was the first to break on the Internet in December 2010. That government conspiracy you may recall, cost the lives of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and thousands of innocent Mexican citizens. The guilty ATF agents and the DOJ cover-up artists who abetted them have yet to punished.

Ms. Kelly seems to have missed my speech entirely, though I am founder of the Three Percent movement that she slanders with the false guilt-by-association conflation that is typical of her main source of “knowledge” -- the Southern Poverty Law Center, or, as I refer to it after tracking 20 years of their fund-raising claims -- the Southern Preposterous Lie Center. These liars for money have even been denounced by intellectually honest liberals. (See Alexander Cockburn’s “King of the Hate Business,” and Ken Silverstein’s “The Church of Morris Dees: How the Southern Poverty Law Center profits from intolerance," among others.)

“For Dees, the P in SPLC has nothing to do with personal poverty. That P better stands for profit or profiteering for him, and foolish donors keep sending him checks, thinking they're helping poverty-stricken blacks or whites in Alabama move into better housing. Since we're on the subject of abodes in the Yellowhammer State, let's have a gander at where Dees lives courtesy of the May 2010 Montgomery Advertiser 60-photo feature just on his mansion, the opulent furnishings and layout, not to mention a fabulous outfit shown off by his wife.” (See “Southern Poverty Fraud Center” at Atlas Shrugs.)

As far as their “anti-racist” reputation, Morris Dees started out his legal career by defending Klansmen and his African-American employees in the 90s accused him of racial bias and discrimination. Many of the surviving Civil Rights “foot soldiers” here in Birmingham who risked their lives in the 1960s demonstrating against the tyranny of Bull Connor and his Klan friends call Dees a “Civil Rights pimp.“ When the ATF was caught in the Good O’ Boys Roundup scandal -- annual get-togethers of white ATF featuring the sale of “nigger hunting licenses” and revolting skits like “The Birth of the Black Race” (where a watermelon was cut open to reveal a black baby doll) -- Morris Dees and SPLC defended the ATF by falsely claiming that the Alabama militia videotape of this racist bacchanal was a forgery. This was later documented by the FBI laboratory to be a venal lie.

But SPLC, ATF and more recently, the Department of Homeland Security, have a very incestuous symbiotic relationship. SPLC has made millions over the years in tax-paid dollars helping “orient” federal, state and local law enforcement officers to the center’s own particular brand of PC politics that Professor Robert Churchill in his book To Shake Their Guns In the Tyrant’s Face called a modern “Brown Scare” with little factual basis.

So when the SPLC defended the racist ATF agents by lying about the evidence against them, it was protecting its own feed trough. To call them hypocrites is an insult to honest hypocrites everywhere. Yet Ms. Kelly finds them “credible” even when honest liberals do not.

But of course if your purpose is to slander a movement made up of citizens with whom you disagree and you don’t want to argue the merits of their case, then using the liars at SPLC to marginalize and belittle them makes perfect sense.

Since Ms. Kelly ignored it, may I excerpt some of my speech so that you may judge for yourselves? I titled it “One country? Or two?’ (The complete transcript is here and the video is here.)

For those of you who don't know me, if you need to pigeonhole my politics I consider myself a Christian libertarian. I believe in God, free men, free markets, the rule of law under the Founder's Republic and that the Constitution extends to everyone regardless of race, creed, color or religion. I most especially believe in the right of the people to keep and bear arms as the ultimate guarantor of liberty. . .

This same principle was at the center of the civil rights movement in the 60s as was the concept of armed civil disobedience and the right of self-defense against uniformed criminals acting out their prejudices on the innocent under color of law. Few however know this part of our history.

Raise your hands if you've ever heard of the Deacons for Defense and Justice.

The Deacons formed black self-defense militias made up mostly of veterans of World War II and Korea (often carrying the weapons they had smuggled back from the wars) who protected the advocates of non-violent resistance. Ironic, huh? We've all heard of Martin Luther King's Gandhian principles, but few know that when he came to my adopted home town of Birmingham he slept soundly and safely because armed men like Condoleeza Rice's father guarded him with firearms in the hands and determination in their hearts. The Deacons were the Three Percenters of their time and place. And like the Deacons, we Three Percenters are here today not to break the law but rather to reinforce those laws against those who would force an opinion-driven agenda as punishment upon the law-abiding under the mere color of law. . .

There is abroad in our land the growing thought that America is now in fact two countries sharing a common border and (mostly) a common language but divided along the answer to this question: DOES THE GOVERNMENT SERVE THE PEOPLE OR DO THE PEOPLE SERVE THE GOVERNMENT? . . .

This is not a question whose answer can be finessed, compromised or negotiated. It is either one or the other. It is either the answer of individual liberty or that of the collectivist Borg. It cannot be both or part of either. For our part we would be happy just to be left alone. But the collectivist impulse – the tyrannical appetite – cannot be readily denied by its practitioners. . .

When San Antonio enforces its leaders’ political opinions under color of law they are no better than Bull Connor in Birmingham in 1963, fifty years ago. What we have seen is not “law enforcement”: it is AGENDA enforcement under color of law – which is itself illegal and unconstitutional. When Police Chief William McManus is quoted as saying he doesn't care what Texas law is, he is declaring himself to be the modern-day Bull Connor.

Does this sound like a racist rant filled with “code words” to you? Ms. Kelly, however, has grasped the ugly truth that it is certainly easier to slander your political opponents than it is to admit that their cause may be one of justified outrage at the enforcement of personal opinions under color of law. By their conduct at the Starbucks arrests that began this battle and through the pre-rally arrest threats that McManus and his supervisors made to their subordinates, the authorities have EARNED our disdain and our defiant march for that very reason. The fact that they backed down at the last minute when faced with hundreds of armed citizens neither excuses that conduct nor does it cover them with glory. They still maintain that they will enforce their “law” a la Starbucks the next chance they are given.

Of course the real target of Ms. Kelly’s conflationist slander is Jerry Patterson, who is linked in her account with the loony Alex Jones, even though Patterson merely provided the venue for a rally at the perfectly-appropriate shrine of American liberty, the Alamo.

I can tell you from personal knowledge that Alex Jones was not on the speakers’ list I was given. He apparently dropped in from Austin on his own personal black helicopter and talked his way onto the speakers’ platform. Mr. Patterson had no inkling that Alex Jones would be bloviating until he was at the mic and Patterson was later quoted as saying that he disagreed with much, if not all, of Jones’ well-nigh hysterical speech. Still, he will be unfairly stuck with the Jones tar-baby by his political opponents, which include Ms. Kelly.

Which brings us back to the questions posed in my speech: Are we still one country or are we two? Do the people now serve the government or does the government serve the people within constitutional limits and the rule of law as the Founders intended? Will the city authorities of San Antonio obey Texas law and the Constitution that they swore to uphold -- not just when thousands are watching and hundreds of law-abiding citizens armed to the teeth are there to see that do?

What will they do going forward? Enforce the law? Or continue to enforce their personal opinions under color of law?

Since San Antonio is a self-insured city and Texas law is clear that citizens can open carry unloaded rifles, one wonders how -- having made an exception for us -- they will enforce their opinions on future citizens lawfully exercising their rights without opening the city and themselves personally to civil suit.

This is the victory that Ms. Kelly conveniently ignores. The citizens of San Antonio should ask themselves ahead of time if enforcing the city authorities’ anti-firearm neuroses are worth the cost. If not, responsible adults should caution that modern incarnation of Bull Connor on their payroll -- Chief McManus -- that his days of enforcing hi opinions under color of law are over.

I’d like to share an anecdote of Chief McManus from the rally. As my friend Bob Wright of New Mexico was leaving, he encountered the Chief who, with a simpering grin, pointed over Bob’s shoulder and asked, “Is he with you?” Bob glanced back to see a fellow garbed as Darth Vader, perhaps coming from a pre-Halloween party. Without missing a heartbeat, Bob turned back to the Chief and replied, “No, he’s one of yours. He’s with the Dark Side.”

Final score: Bob Wright, 1. Chief McManus, 0.

It was the perfect metaphor for the day that was the culmination of a fight that McManus deliberately but unthinkingly picked with the law-abiding armed citizenry of Texas.

Again I ask the question: Do the people of San Antonio have the stomach to cheerfully cash the checks that Chief “Bull” McManus has written with his mouth and by his actions? Time will tell, and if necessary, we’ll be back.

But as San Antonio is a marvelous city and her people friendly to a fault, I will be happy for the chance to once again highlight Chief McManus as the arbitrary yet expensive fool that he has made of himself.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

“Massively involved in the manufacture of the crime, the ATF's actions constitute conduct disgraceful to the federal government. It is not a function of our government to entice into criminal activity unsuspecting people engaged in lawful conduct; not a function to invent a fiction in order to bait a trap for the innocent; not a function to collect conspirators to carry out a script written by the government. As the executive branch of our government has failed to disavow this conduct, it becomes the duty of the judicial branch to refuse to accept these actions as legitimate elements of a criminal case in a federal court.”

The good news? Judge Noonan, an experienced and respected Circuit Judge, correctly calls-out this ATF manufactured-crime scheme as a “disgrace.”

John Lott has written another book. No big surprise there. The surprise, forwarded to me by David Codrea, is that Lott has sanitized the story of the Fast and Furious scandal by writing me out of it.

Now, it is no surprise that John Lott doesn't like me very much. He took the trouble to personally look me up when I was resting and chatting with supporters on the steps at the side of the Connecticut state house right after my Hartford speech back in April (he also spoke at the rally) to take me to task for my "lawbreaking," saying that I was alienating the vast majority in the center and playing to gun confiscationists' worst characterizations of American firearm owners.

I told him if he was waiting for the "vast middle" to agree with us or to save us from the determined minority of collectivists who sought to disarm us he would be waiting a very long time. He left, frustrated and obviously angry that I could not see his "wisdom." The CCDL folks later told me he was loud in his denunciation of my speech to them as well. They did not agree.

Now it seems I have been "punished" by being swept down Lott's own personal memory hole. Pretty funny, really.

Whatever the EPA's motivation when creating the new lead air quality standard, increasingly restrictive regulation of lead is likely to affect the production and cost of traditional ammunition. Just this month, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that will ban lead ammunition for all hunting in California. The Center for Biological Diversity has tried multiple times to get similar regulations at the federal level by trying, and repeatedly failing, to get the EPA to regulate conventional ammunition under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

At this time, it's unclear if Doe Run or another company will open a new lead smelter in the United States that can meet the more stringent lead air quality standards by using more modern smelting methods. What is clear is that after the Herculaneum smelter closes its doors in December, entirely domestic manufacture of conventional ammunition, from raw ore to finished cartridge, will be impossible.

But hey, I guess we can always buy lead from the Chinese where pollution controls are NON-EXISTENT, right? What could go wrong with that?

Maryland state police and federal agents used a search warrant in an unrelated criminal investigation to seize the private reporting files of an award-winning former investigative journalist for The Washington Times who had exposed problems in the Homeland Security Department's Federal Air Marshal Service.

I asked a retired Marine friend of mine familiar with the workings of the Pentagon to comment on this development and he observed:

Mike -- I'll pass on a detailed response to this one, but will say that I do NOT believe BHO had anything to do with this idiocy.

Some flunkey on SecNav Mabus' staff is my bet.

Mabus, the former governor of MS is a died-in-the-wool uber liberal, and determined to gut the traditions of the Naval Service since they originated in a time when PC was not the dominant consideration that it is today.

Red Dot Arms is running a special on M16 bolt carriers -- $99.00 complete, assembled and ready to go.

Don't freak that it is an M16 rather an AR15. It is perfectly legal to use in a semi-auto AR. (There is even an ATF letter on the subject which you can find out there on the Net.) Lots of shooters prefer using M16 bolt carrier assemblies because the slightly heavier weight reduces recoil. I have seen these in production and they look to this non-gunsmith eye to be top quality. From the last time I built an M4, $99 is a deal.

Friday, October 25, 2013

God informed Gideon that the men he had gathered were too many – with so many men, there would be reason for the Israelites to claim the victory as their own instead of acknowledging that God had saved them. God first instructed Gideon to send home those men who were afraid. Gideon then allowed any man who wanted to leave, to leave; 22,000 men returned home and 10,000 remained. Yet the number was still too many, according to God:

(4) But Adonai Elohim Said to Gideon, "There are still too many men. Take them down to the water, and I will sift them for you there. If I say, 'This one shall go with you, he shall go; but if I say, this one shall not go with you, he shall not go." (5) So Gideon took the men down to the water. There Adonai Elohim Told him, "Separate those who lap the water with their tongues like a dog from those who kneel down to drink." (6) Three hundred men lapped with their hands to their mouths. All the rest got down on their knees to drink. (7) Adonai Elohim Said to Gideon, "With the 300 men that lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands. Let all the other men go, each to his own place.(Judges 7:4–7, NIV Bible)

During the night God instructed Gideon to approach the Midianite camp. Gideon overheard a Midianite man tell a friend of a dream in which God had given the Midianites over to Gideon. Gideon worshiped God for His encouragement and revelation. Gideon returned to the Israelite camp and gave each of his men a trumpet (shofar)[3] and a clay jar with a torch hidden inside. Divided into three companies, Gideon and the three hundred marched on the enemy camp.

(17) "Watch me," he told them. "Follow my lead. When I get to the edge of the camp, do exactly as I do. (18) When I and all who are with me blow our trumpets, then from all around the camp blow yours and shout, 'For Adonai and for Gideon.' " .... (20) The three companies blew the trumpets and smashed the jars. Grasping the torches in their left hands and holding in their right hands the trumpets they were to blow, they shouted, "A sword for Adonai and Gideon!" (21) While each man held his position around the camp, all the Midianites ran, crying out as they fled. (22) When the three hundred trumpets sounded, Adonai caused the men throughout the camp to turn on each other with their swords. (Judges 7:17–22, NIV Bible)

One of the reasons for being glad to be as old as I am is that I may be spared living to see a race war in America. Race wars are often wars in which nobody wins and everybody ends up much worse off than they were before.

Initial skirmishes in that race war have already begun, and have in fact been going on for some years. But public officials pretend that it is not happening, and the mainstream media seldom publish it at all, except in ways that conceal what is really taking place.

For American society, a dangerous polarization has set in. Signs of this polarization over the years include opposite reactions between blacks and whites to the verdict in the O. J. Simpson murder case, the “rape” charges against Duke University students, and the trials resulting from the beating of Rodney King and the death of Trayvon Martin.

More dangerous than these highly publicized episodes over the years are innumerable organized and unprovoked physical attacks on whites by young black gangs in shopping malls, on beaches, and in other public places all across the country today.

A three-sided race war in this country would destroy any hope of restoring the repubic and would lead, inevitably, to an American Hitler. The black community would not survive it -- indeed, it would look a lot like the final solution. As the smallest of the racial groups in numbers, they would be expunged, and then the rest of the country would be split between whites and Reconquistas. We can win a 4GW against American tyranny. No one wins a race war. No one. Yet I cannot fault Sowell's analysis. We are slipping down the bloody path to ignorant tribal armies clashing by night.

Lies in the Sand: A Look Behind The Alamo Gun Rally Interesting that this collectivist harpy didn't manage to cover my speech linking the Deacons for Defense and Justice and the civil rights movement of the 60s to today's firearm rights movement and how the Constitution extends to everyone regardless of race, creed, color and religion. Accidental omission?

("I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." -- The Catholic Confiteor.)

"Kerodin may have stole, but you were a communist. Not only that, you were in the INNER CIRCLE!!! How much worse does it get? Kerodin could have stolen $1 from 10 million people and what you did was 10 times worse. How can we trust that you are a patriot? Because you give a few speeches? Oh, yea, i'm convinced. You may very well be a commie double agent."

"Cavmedic68w" sez, quoting me:

"Advocates of the murder of innocents do not, in my opinion, constitute the Three Percent principles that I laid out originally."

Really, I find that comment extemely ironic.

The last time I checked, the forces of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao(and those wishing to fill their shoes) not only advocated the same, but joyfully performed that slaughter throughout the entire 20th century.

By the way, you wholeheartedly rolled with those collectivists once upop a time.

Did you not?

It is as if they have discovered a great dark secret of mine that I have been trying to hide. Of course, I have NEVER made a secret of what I refer to as my "Benedict Arnold period." (Note my talk on "Intentions of the Enemy" in the upper right corner of Sipsey Street.) In fact my previous service to the dark side informs and motivates me to fight for the Founders' Republic. Early on at Sipsey Street I tried to explain this and my journey into the light with A Missed Anniversary: "Vous les Americains Sont Pires que les Francais."

Among other things, I wrote:

The memories always hang heavy on my heart. This is not merely because it was hardly my country's finest hour, but because I bear personal guilt for it. You see, as the NVA gradually overran South Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge overran Cambodia, I cheered the fall of every province, marking them on a map. This was during my Benedict Arnold period, when I was a communist and an avowed enemy of the constitutional republic of the United States. As a member first of the peacenik anti-war movement which I joined in 1967, then later the Students for Democratic Society, the Young Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Workers Party, the Workers Action Movement and finally the Maoist Progressive Labor Party, I had demonstrated, leafleted, marched, rioted, been tear gassed, billy clubbed and briefly, arrested (but later released without charges), eight years of street-level radicalism, all with an eye toward this day. . .

So when Cambodia and South Vietnam fell, I was one of the happiest traitorous bastards around. I just hoped "the Revolution" would start here in my lifetime. Yeah, I was that stupid. I suppose I would have continued on being terminally stupid until I became stupidly dead, if it hadn't been for a kindly old ex-Wehrmacht surgeon named Richter who, at the end of his life, decided to wrestle the devil for my soul. . .

I once did a radio show with Dr. Russ Fine, who then had the evening call-in show on a certain station here in Birmingham. David Horowitz' book Radical Son had just come out, about his conversion from being a red diaper baby into a real American. David was pimping his book and Russ was happy to talk about it and to have someone experienced from that period of history to chat with Horowitz as someone with similar background.

After exchanging bona fides about the extent of our previous sins, I asked him the question that had, since my encounter with Herr Doktor Richter, most preyed on my own mind:

"David," I asked, "do you ever feel Benedict Arnold looking over your shoulder?" He was quiet for a moment, you could hear the slight crackle of that long phone line to California. Then he said, slowly, solemnly, "Yes."

"But if you're like me, you'll never get caught on the wrong side of your faith or the Constitution again, will you?"

"No," he replied firmly, "I won't."

And believe me, there is no greater anti-communist than an ex-communist. We know all the lies, first hand.

We also know that we can't go back.

We have burned our bridges and will live or die on the ground we have chosen. Of course twelve-step ex-leftists like Horowitz and me aren't brave at all compared to the Kit Carsons, nor did we recant in the expectation that we were joining a losing side like George Orwell or Whittaker Chambers. THOSE guys changed sides in the belief that while it was the right thing to do, they were probably joining a losing cause. Both were under the impression that either Sovietism or fascism was going to win in the end. But still they denounced the lies and stood on the truth, expecting death at the wall or in a ditch rather than reward. . .

And one other thing. As near as I can tell without a god-like glimpse into other men's souls we are all, we ex-communists, motivated by guilt at what we did in the name of totalitarianism. This guilt we must expunge by our every action for the rest of our lives. We cannot backslide, we cannot be fooled, or fool ourselves, into believing the lies ever again. . .

And I spoke about the moral agony of recovering your conscience too late:

Do you begin to understand the guilt for someone who has recovered his conscience too late? The blood of Khy Hak's family is on my hands, just as the blood of Russian kulaks was on Whittaker Chambers' hands. When you recover your conscience, the only thing you can do is make sure, to the best of your ability, that it never happens again.

We do not choose the circumstances of the world we live in, yet we must react as best we can to its challenges. For me, I have no choice. I must continue to walk along the path Herr Doktor Richter showed me more than thirty years ago in that hospital room on Nine East. My fate was set, and my Master selected, when I turned my face from pagan collectivist evil under the patient tutelage of a wise, slight-statured old man with a perpetual smile and white hair.

I can never and will never go back.

So when somebody whispers in your ear, "Well, you can't trust him, he used to be a communist," think twice. For he may be the only one who sees clearly enough to point your way through the minefield of bad choices that collectivism -- any and all collectivism -- represents.

And when I cross over to that place my Master has chosen for me, I can only hope Khy Hak is there, so I can finally beg his forgiveness for the sins of my youth. Until then, I will think of him and the millions like him every April, when spring reminds me of my guilty complicity in collectivist mass murder.

That is the reality I live with every day and what I have never been shy about sharing. Whether I am sincere or not, I leave that to you, gentle readers. I know that I've spent the last decades trying to atone for that sin. I also know that I have seen no such self-reflection on the part of Kerodin, who is no mere thief as Anonymous characterized him, but an unrepentant extortionist. Kerodin's main problem seems to be that he got caught and it's all your fault for pointing that out. And to this day he still specializes in threatening people if they don't genuflect before his altar.

But to all you FOCKs I will confess: Yes, you got me, I'm an ex-communist. And your point is?

NOTE: The comments on this post are now closed, awaiting further developments.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

So what should this new 4GW armed service be? The answer of our working group at the symposium was, "a militia."

The militia was the basis of America’s defense through most of our history as a republic. More, there are two contemporary models. One is volunteer fire departments, which small town and rural America depend on and which almost always perform well. The other is community policing, where cops walk the same beat in the same neighborhood for a long time, long enough to understand the neighborhood and prevent crimes instead of just responding to them. Neither volunteer fire departments nor community police serve as control mechanisms for the federal government. They respond to their local communities, not to Washington.

The new militia’s most important function would be neighborhood watch. The only way to prevent 4GW attacks is to find out about them before they happen, and that means the militia, like community police, must know what is happening in their neighborhoods. But again, we don’t want to feed Big Brother. Almost all of what the militia knows should remain on the local level.

How can we make this happen? Our working group decided the militia should normally report to the county sheriff, a local, elected official who has a lot of independence. Sheriffs’ powers, defined over centuries in common law, allow them to tell the feds to stick it. Nor are they under the thumb of local or state politicians. If they violate citizens’ rights, they can be unelected real fast. The militia, we also decided, would not have powers of arrest unless deputized. A separation of powers between the militia and law enforcement would also help maintain citizens’ rights.

Another danger we wanted to avoid was allowing the First Generation culture of order, still characteristic of America’s Second Generation armed forces, to carry over to the new service. Like Third Generation militaries, the militia must be outward focused, prize initiative over obedience and depend on self-discipline, not imposed discipline. We therefore determined that there should be very little in the way of formal ranks or commands and no saluting, drill, uniforms (at least none required) etc. The largest unit would be the company, with an elected captain. The captain’s duties would be mostly administrative, and sub-units could elect adjutants to handle their paperwork if they wanted to. The militiamen would be free to choose leaders on a task basis, picking whoever they thought was best qualified depending on what they had to do. Yes, this means trusting ordinary citizens to show some common sense. Republics do that; if they can’t or won’t, they are no longer republics.

Threepers, the Next Generation. Three Percenter Jason T. with some old fart from Alabama. It was gratifying to find so many younger Three Percenters at the Alamo rally.

From a reader in San Antonio yesterday:

I have heard nothing but silence here (from opposition) after the rally. My contacts say that it seems that the general take is that the less said the better. Nothing official has cropped up in reference to future issues, just seems to be a “wait and see attitude”. I rather suspect that huge sigh of relief was true response, lol. Guess that normal citizens can be indeed trusted to handle both their firearms rights and 1st Amendment rights, at least in San Antonio, Texas.

The anti-climatic, non-confrontational results of several hundred armed folks gathering at the Alamo and their defiant march off-premises daring the authorities to arrest them belied the concerns just days before the event. You may recall:

Patrol officers attending in-service training courses and other meetings/roll calls have been informed that department heads (i.e. Knickers in a bunch Chief McManus) have determined that officers will be told/ordered to make arrests for disorderly conduct. Their reasoning/justification? Any citizens wishing to set up a confrontation with the police by open carrying a rifle will be considered to be acting in a manner contrary to the public peace and good order.

We heard these rumors from several sources in and around the SAPD and city government. It took a lot of guts for the participants to risk arrest to make their point, but they did. Lord, how I loved them when I saw the gathering that morning. You may also recall my later tag on the above post:

I sent a copy of this to the Mayor and City Council of San Antonio with the note: "Posted on my blog this morning. And, I might add, we're seeking some adult supervision and cool heads in the SAPD."

Later reports just before the event indicated that our mention of San Antonio's self-insurance dilemma "caught TPTB by the short hairs," according to one of my sources. The day before the event we knew that any hard-line "harassment and interdiction" orders that had been considered were not being repeated to the various shifts of SAPD. If they were contemplating confronting us, they were all of sudden being very quiet about it. It seemed likely that the decision had been taken by that "adult supervision" to handle us with kid gloves, which is what happened.

Indeed, there are rumors that Chief McManus, who has never been been a favorite of some on the City Council, is in even deeper excrement with the political leaders of SA. The main gripe is not with his anti-gun bias but rather that he picked an unnecessary confrontation that was an embarrassing loss for city government. And collectivists are all about results. The late-in-the-day petty harassment of the individuals remaining in the park and the comments afterward were simply to salve their own chapped asses and a poor attempt to put lipstick on the pig they brought home to Momma. The commissars (er, ah, I mean the City Council) of San Antonio are not pleased -- not pleased at all. In fact, when I was informed of that fact, I was reminded of this scene from Enemy at the Gates:

Red Army General : I carried out my orders. I sent in all of my boys. But the Germans engulfed us. They have, artillery, aircraft, tanks. And me! What did I have?!

Khrushchev: The sacred duty to resist! I have to report back to the boss. [hands him a pistol] Perhaps you'd prefer to avoid the red tape. (Gunshot.)

Their irritation is understandable. How they expect to enforce their personal prejudices under color of law (a la the Starbucks incident) successfully from here on out is both legally problematic and promises more public relations disasters (not to mention expensive lawsuits against the city and them personally). The rally and march, then, accomplished what it set out to do. As I earlier paraphrased Nathan Bedford Forrest, "we slapped their jaws and forced them to resent it."

This incident has also managed to put even more distance between the Chief and the street cops, who see the whole thing as unnecessary liberal street theater calculated to alienate folks who they view as law-abiding and a source of support against the criminal element. The overwhelming number of cops I encountered were friendly to the point of insubordination to the Chief.

I am also told that they were surprised that we were so well informed about the inner workings of the SAPD and the Chief's initial plans. That, plus the NYT article beforehand, convinced the hierarchy that not only was the whole world watching them but it was reading their minds. They discovered something that we have known for a while -- we are everywhere.

So, we won.

The victory, however, was marred -- almost negated -- by the Alex Jones roadshow who did the Alamo just about how Debbie did Dallas.

The supreme wizard of conspiracy and disinformation, the buffoon of Austin, Alex Jones, invited himself in and was quite foolishly given a microphone. In twelve minutes of hoarse, screaming, incoherent raving he removed every bit of dignity and reason from the event. Thank God the speakers following him, Jay Stang, Mike Vanderboegh, Stewart Rhodes, and Renn Bodecker restored a sane cadence to the proceeding and brought us down from the hysterical ravings of the most audacious huckster ever to come out of Texas, to the reasoned efforts of patriots attempting to save a country. Sorry Alex Jones fans but that is how I saw it. . .

Patterson went way out on a political limb to allow this event at the Alamo. To suddenly have Captain Chemtrails himself (Alex Jones) on the stage, unannounced has now created a political liability for Patterson. Facing an election you can bet your boots the opposition will use this to beat him in the head. Not the best way to repay his political courage in my opinion.

Indeed. I would be surprised if anybody EVER gets another chance to use the Alamo as a backdrop for their rally while Patterson is land commissioner and I certainly can't blame him. However Alex Jones talked his way onto the stage (he wasn't on the speaker's list I was provided) he damaged the entire proceedings. That much is certain. As I wrote in an email early this morning:

My main concern, like Bob's, is in the damage this whole affair has done to Mr. Patterson. The organizers owe him a huge apology, not that it does any good after the fact. Save Alex Jones, the rest of the event (and San Antonio's backing down) was a huge success that we owe in great measure to Mr. Patterson -- but that's like saying, "Well, apart from that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

(A personal note here: I didn't know about Jones even being there until I got back from using the john across the street when I was told that he had made a speech. My initial reaction was grim satisfaction at his available proximity -- Jones had slandered me three years ago at the time of the window campaign, saying that if I wasn't arrested for my advocacy that I was a paid federal provocateur. I went to demand an apology in person and Jones feigned ignorance. After trying to jog his foggy memory, he finally admitted that he did recall SOMETHING about it but it was all rather nebulous. He then said, "Well, it WAS provocative (which is not the same thing, of course, as paid federal provocateur) and he added "I wouldn't have done it." "I know," I retorted, "you haven't got the balls." I then turned and left his august presence with his camera-rolling retinue staring slack-jawed at my back. Ultimately, Stewart Rhodes dragooned him into giving me an ungracious apology. I told him I'd believe it when he did it publicly -- as publicly as he did when he slandered me. Pigs may fly, but I doubt it.)

That said, the entire rally and march recharged my own personal batteries. We came, we saw, we kicked their ass. The other thing that gratified me was the large number of young Threepers and Oath Keepers there. They are the future. They represented all religious and ethnic origins as well -- Americans and Three Percenters all, united in the fight to restore the Founders' Republic. I was exhausted from the drive and the CHF and my wounds acting up, but it was both humbling and thrilling to see personally the success of the Three Percent idea.

Meeting Renn Bodecker was also a personal honor. Renn is 90 and I worried about his stamina with all the walking required. He put me to shame. Here's his and Stewart's speeches at the rally:

And, as I wrote the morning we drove back:

(I had) wonderful time I had seeing old friends like Warrior Class and his charming wife, guys from the struggles in the 90s like Bill Utterback and Jon Roland, my brother from another mother Bob Wright and his right-hand, Sgt. Studley (who once stuck a .45 in an Identity terrorist's ribs to achieve a little public order at a speech of mine). Then there were the comrades-in-arms from Oathkeepers like Stewart Rhodes and Jay Stang and the amazing World War II vet Renn Boedecker. I got to meet long-time readers like Dick F. and met a whole bunch of new folks of all ages. It was particularly gratifying to meet the young Three Percenters coming up. Boy, do I love Texas. It was humbling and a great honor to be so warmly greeted by so many folks. Lots of Threepers here in the Lone Star state. Lots.

Finally, I'd like to thank all those whose contributions made it possible to travel to San Antonio and back. May God bless you all. I hope I made it count.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.